DESCRIPTION(Provided by Applicant): [unreadable] The major goal of this training program, which will enter its 20th year in May 2003, has been, and is, to interest young investigators in a career in biomedical research pertaining to dermatology and its diseases, and to provide them the training to be successful in that career. This training program, is designed to train medical students (predoctoral fellows and short-term students) and M.D., Ph.D. or M.D/Ph.D. graduates in the basic science of cutaneous biology or in clinical epidemiology. Although originally geared toward postdoctoral training, in the last 5 years we have also started to train one predoctoral student a year. The general aim is to train dermatologists, Ph.D. cutaneous biologists, and medical students to approach problems in dermatology and cutaneous biology logically and scientifically. Another important aim is to impart our enthusiasm for the study of skin as a fascinating and incredibly productive model system to address many issues in basic biology and pathophysiology of disease. Finally we help find suitable positions for trainees in industry, academics or for further training in clinical or research areas. Our basic goals and aims as described above remain the same. However with a new PI (Dr. John R. Stanley) we have extended our goals to try to encourage and train physician scientists in Dermatology. To do so we have asked for an additional predoctoral slot and three short-term slots in order to encourage medical students to consider careers of research in dermatology. We have also placed an emphasis on recruiting M.D.-Ph.D. students to a four year clinical/research residency program in which trainees pursue postdoctoral research fellowships leading to careers as physician scientists. [unreadable] [unreadable]